The Wedding Poem and Other Poems

By James Croal Jackson

The Wedding Poem

I was asked to write a poem
      to read at your wedding.
I have been writing for weeks. 
I don’t know what I’m trying to do 
      but I know it’s something new. 
Mostly the poem has become my life. 
Mostly it’s a poem of longing 
      for what the poem in me longs for. 
Mostly it is a poem of the fight between desire 
      and desire. 
Mostly it is a poem of desire 
      from the poem’s point of view. 
Maybe the poem is a poem of love. 
Though like most loves, the poem is a little 
       exasperated. 
The poem seems at the moment 
       to be in the middle of a struggle. 
The poem says the poem is struggling. 
The poem says it wants more 
       than this. 
The poem wants to try and try again. 
The poem wants you 
       to write a new poem for it. 
It hopes it will then write a new 
       vow. 
I don’t know why I made myself 
       the center of this. 
I don’t know why I seem to be 
       the only person in the poem.
How’s this: I said I was going 
       to love you forever.
I believed it.
I believed in it.
I didn’t expect the word forever
          to seem anachronistic.
What do you mean,
          forever?
Who told you
         the wedding poem is for you?
Who told you the wedding poem 
         has to mean anything?
The wedding poem is a poem 
         about the poetry we dream.
I see you on the stage.
You are on the stage with me.
You found a poem you loved
           and someone reads us its vows.
We try to see the future.
We try to see the poems we are
           even though we might not know them.
We try to see the future.
I try to see the future.
We try to see a poem about to happen.
This is a poem about the dream.
I try to see a poem about to happen.
This is a poem about to happen.
It has become a poem for you.
It has become a poem for me.
This is a poem about the poem that isn’t
            yet.
I struggle to see a poem 
about to happen.
I struggle to see the poem about to happen.

Purple Paint

on your bed was revelation a coming
to know purple paint with third-floor 
view the pines and run-down houses all
strangers because we too once only 
knew each other in name then your cat 
nuzzled nose against my legflesh and we 
sipped on beers we left on the nightstand 
to finish later when the last bitter note 
lingered on our tongues

Hide and Seek

We turned off the lights and counted 
to a hundred in a house more familiar
 
than our aging hands. I found solace
deep in the cockroach closet– you, 

beneath the brown beanbag. 
We waited in these surroundings 

for our lovers’ eyes to adjust.
We never wanted it so quiet.

Celestial Egg

They’re not deviled eggs

because Lucifer was once an angel

Anth

At the bar you order 
a small white plate 
of celestial eggs. 

Holy mayonnaise
yellow topped
with chives.

They are gulped 
except for the last, 
which you offer me

through telepathy. 
I am the egg.
When I stop throbbing

is when I live
so I hold it high
in our five spotlights.

The arena cheers.
I see many doors.
Five floors: 

on the bottom, death,
but each row above 
a plethora of possibilities.

In your car, you say 
I am feeling unmoored,
my shoe half-out your door.

The renaissance is what we 
make. It is brown paint 
over everything, the oil 

light– you ask, what is on
your mind? I don't know 
how much you know

but I felt the warmth
of the machine beside me
thrumming on the street.

You were on the phone,
I think. I glared– I think
the end is coming 

faster than fresh ideas
or the universe’s 
rate of expansion. 

The fact you drove
saved me from running 
through the dark city

in the center of my existence.
In the shadow room 
inside my house,

I did not process 
emotion. The throbbing 
sprain in my foot.

It was that death
issued a rain check
when I smacked my head 

in the basement bar
of the indie theater.
I was the movie

everyone watched.
I left everyone waiting
for me to emerge

from the sewer. I swear 
I will not group up next time.
I want each synapse

comprehended. To succeed
would be the stretchy fabric
of my living. Nylon



for the brain. Procrastination 
for the ascent. I say you need
not worry because I am not

worried. Depression is a shovel
deep in soil and I am buried 
in my mind, thankful 

to be given a second 
heaping of kindness 
when I never deserved the first. 

Hard to learn you 
when my body is uniformly 
jagged and growing 

hairs sharp like knives 
eternally out of every inch. 
I want to be tender

with you, but once 
I eat, all mysticism 
is lost to time.

A Red Container

I am worried about the return 
to normalcy the work of going 
to work the work is what I am 
doing what capitalists want
is your drive to drive x miles 
with a red container of gas that 
fuels us bright limitless stars

In Lieu of Help, Send Flowers

On the job I steal time already
stolen from me. Taxidermied
deer on beige walls. Nature
in a protein bar. Yes,
I am consuming. No,
I am no consumer.
I push hard 
but age miserably
among antlers
while day flees 
into night flops
into the far future.
My family will
want bouquets
but you’ll know
what to do.

Temporary

I often dream of simpler times– 
driving my car to a customer
 
with a bag full of food, and poof– 
gone. Then the memory fades 

in an instant. All of time 
passing. Right now. Into the ether. 

The clock has dropped its weary 
hand a tick downward. 

The other hand desperately 
reaches toward the sun.

After the Zoo

the offense was claws in which I tore 
the seams of treaded jeans we admired
                of hornbills suspended in the space 
between freedom and constriction 
and contrails the zest of the situation 
lingered in halves the happening and aftermath 
a baptismal drizzle of your departing hatchback 
entirely left to the discretion of satellites

Cannon Town

long voids of violence    I am a citizen a city
telephoning the dark    fodder     fear
full of black spherical iron    that killed
in a prior era    mouth such force vertically
above the city center    arrive 
with the words of an impending meteor

For Exercise and Variety

walking around my home wearing sun
glasses FitBit records silent steps on white 

wood floors creak a silver SUV whirs past
window no peephole a dead end slightly 

darker shade how my eyes reckon 
in multiple lights their very veins

stretch and pulsate spectrum my entire 
field ever present ever pressured 

the world in layers I perceive body 
as hunger pushing into all frames 

of frames of knick-knacks I need to
donate but fear the gift-givers will find out

one may ask that yodeling pickle wasn’t 
good enough of course not what was ever 

its purpose but to transfer to another hand
or be buried deep in dry and dying land 

James Croal Jackson works in film production. His most recent chapbooks are Count Seeds With Me (Ethel Zine & Micro-Press, 2022) and Our Past Leaves (Kelsay Books, 2021). Recent poems can be found in Stirring, White Wall Review, and Vagabond City Lit. He edits The Mantle Poetry from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (jamescroaljackson.com)